Outside of a small coffee shop in Manhattan’s Upper west side, two men sit next to each other at adjacent tables, although they sit separately. One is young, and the other is older. The younger man is named Russell, and the older Victor. Russell has with him a small stack of books and a journal, which he hunches over as he watches passersby and occasionally makes a note, occasionally referencing a page in one of his books. Victor sits quietly sipping an espresso; he has nothing with him but a cane, one of those nice canes with a duck or dog head carved for the handle. The tables line the sidewalk, and across the street are various boutiques and high-fashion shops. Russell breaks the silence.
R: Can I ask you a question?
V: Me? Yes of course.
R: What do you do? What’s your profession?
V: Well I’m retired- I am- I was a teacher. I taught history for twenty-three years. Tenth grade.
R: Excellent. That’s perfect. Can I ask you another question?
V: Ask away.
R: Do you think people are happy?
V: What do you mean?
R: I mean, do you think people are happy?
V: What do you mean by happiness exactly?
R: Well, that’s a good question- I mean, well why don’t you tell me what you consider to be happiness, since you’ll be answering.
V: Perhaps we can define it together.
R: Perhaps we can.
V: When you ask of happiness like this, I assume you mean a general happiness, an overall feeling as opposed to one moment.
R: Yes. Happiness in the big picture.
V: Do you think people live in the big picture?
R: Ha- no actually, I don’t. But I think when they ask themselves this question, if they do, they are asking themselves “am I generally happy?”
V: So then you are interested in whether people actually are happy, as opposed to merely thinking they’re happy?
R: Exactly. Well a person could be deluded enough to think that they are happy when they are clearly not, but I think people usually know when they’re deceiving themselves. For the sake of this discussion, let’s assume people know whether they are happy or not.
V: Maybe we should assume instead that average—but not deluded—people may think that they are happy and be mistaken, and that they generally realize the mistake.
R: I’ll accept that.
V: So you are interested then in whether people are honestly happy with their lives in the big picture – but still, what exactly does this happiness feel like?
R: It must be more than simply “feeling good”- it has to be deeper, more substantial. A sense of satisfaction with one’s life, a sense that one’s existence is meaningful.
V: Do you think that in order to be honestly happy a person must believe that their life is meaningful?
R: Yes- don’t you?
V: What if something else makes them just as happy?
R: Such as?
V: Such as climbing trees, or riding a bike, or examining bugs under a microscope. What if the question of their life’s meaning never enters their mind? What if they are satisfied simply by being alive, and they don’t need to know that they are living “meaningful” lives?
R: First, such people don’t exist outside of simpletons. And simpletons don’t know what it means to be truly happy. Simple people are like children: they are satisfied with a new toy, but there must continually be a new toy. This is not happiness, it is amusement. But even simple people know the difference. Even simple people know that something is missing, that there is something more.
V: Ah. I see. So now we talk of true happiness. I take it you believe that true happiness is not available to all?
R: No- I believe that it is. But people stand in their own way. They don’t look beyond what is in front of them. They—well never mind. Let’s get back to answering the question first. Where were we?
V: I believe we have established that true happiness is to have a sense of satisfaction with one’s life, and a sense that one’s life is meaningful.
R: Yes. Can you answer now?
V: Yes. My answer is no.
R: So I expected. We think alike after all.
V: Less than you think.
R: Really? I took you for a thoughtful man.
V: Let me ask you a question- it’s….
R: Russell.
V: Russell. Victor. Nice to meet you. Let me ask you a question now: What do you do?
R: I am a graduate student in sociology. I also study philosophy.
V: I gathered something like that. I see your books there. Don’t read too much, or you’ll forget how to live.
R: Is that so? I think there is much life in books.
V: So there is. Here’s my second question: What do you think is significant about whether people are happy or not?
R: Well, I mean I think happiness is the end we are all pursuing isn’t it?
V: I asked this one.
R: Ok, yes, I think happiness is the end we are all pursuing. We are designed, by nature, or by God if you wish, to be seekers. We seek sustenance, and when we have that, we seek further. When our bellies are full and our thirst is quenched, our mind wanders to the desires of the flesh, and those of the heart, and finally the mind. Or so that is our potential. You can gauge a person by their tastes: the shallower a person, the more interested they are in things that satisfy the needs of the body. Most people are in-between, but they lean a little shallow: they appreciate a good book now and then, a thoughtful film, but they generally just want to be entertained, and the best entertainment satisfies instantly. What they don’t see is that the “happiness” they feel from eating cheese dip and watching their favorite sports team doesn’t last through bedtime. That’s why it must be repeated over and over and over again, until their bodies and minds have grown soft and they can’t appreciate any satisfaction that takes effort. Of course it’s not always cheese dip and sports. For some people it’s shopping, like our friends across the street. A shiny new bag on their shoulder and they’re all smiles. For the next person over, it’s not the bag but the compliments the bag brings. Or the envy. Or the acceptance. It’s not much different, whatever form it takes. People are pursuing the feeling of happiness, and most people don’t make it past full bellies, full egos and a good laugh. But we are laughing ourselves to death, and it won’t be funny in the end.
V: You said before that you think most people realize when they’re not happy. Are you saying people persist in this “shallow” behavior, and even though they feel some sense of satisfaction, they know that they are not truly happy?
R: Absolutely. I mean, years and years of shallow living can kill a person’s aptitude for higher living, but generally speaking, somewhere deep down in their consciousness, they know it.
V: They know what exactly?
R: That they are sad. That there is more to life. That they are settling for instant gratification. For consumerism. For a life on the surface. A life unexamined, as-
V: Yes, as Aristotle would say. So what is the remedy to this great lie that people live, if I might ask?
R: I’m glad you did. The remedy is to wake up. To realize that life is short, and our opportunities to make it meaningful, and thereby derive a deeper sense of satisfaction from it, are few. To stop buying every new piece of crap that some manufacturer puts on the shelf, because it won’t fill the void. To stop convincing yourself that all those little decisions you make don’t matter, because for most people their lives are simply a bunch of little decisions. But they don’t have to be. The remedy is to seek greatness. Deprive yourself of what you can have now for what you might gain in the future. Don’t follow the herd into a life of mediocrity. We need to become a fitter people, so that we might do more. Fitness in all respects. Fitness of body and mind, fitness of choice. We need to become self-reliant. We should stop relying on the government, or the media, or our best friend to tell us what’s important. We must decide what matters, what is worth pursuing and what isn’t. That is a life examined. Most people are merely receptacles for other people’s creations and values. Most people are unhappy because most people don’t live- they are just preoccupied. If people would start rejecting the status quo, start thinking for themselves, they would see that they are playing the part of the cog-in-the-machine of the rich and powerful, and when they die, their only legacy will be how much they gave to perpetuate the cycle of mindless living that deprived them of true happiness. Happiness is self-determination. Happiness is independence, awareness of the self. Happiness is creation, not consumption.
V: I see. That’s insightful.
R: And you disagree?
V: I think that’s exactly what a graduate student in sociology living in Upper West-Side Manhattan would say.
R: Oh? And what would a retired high-school history teacher say?
V: I would say that your perception of this plight is myopic—in other words, you tend to apply the problems you see here, in middle-upper class American society, to the world, and assume that they are universal. But you’d be wrong. When you speak of “people” it means a great deal that you take all the people of the world into your account, and not just those conveniently situated in your own experience.
R: Who says I don’t?
V: If you did, you wouldn’t think that most people are faced with choosing between cheese dip and football and true happiness. Most people are looking for their next meal. Most people are living in abject or modest poverty. Most people are trying to survive in overcrowded cities with poor sanitation and corrupt governments. The problems of the world are not those of idle Americans with too much time and money on their hands. And whether the inhabitants of this country or any other are happy, whether they believe their lives are meaningful or not—these are questions born of idleness as well. A different kind—the academic kind. The kind that forgets that the world is a cruel place where people suffer, and that your average citizen of earth is simply trying not to starve, not to freeze, not to be killed by their enemies, and to progress only slightly beyond the station that nature has put them in before they die.
R: Ah- so the world is made up of simple people then.
V: Quite the opposite. Just because a person does not have time to sit around and wonder about whether they’re truly happy does not make them simple. They feel the pleasures and pains of this life just as keenly as you or I. It is their perspective that is different. They do not see life as a catalogue they can order from, hoping their choices will bring them contentedness. They see life as a challenge to their survival, and they are mainly focused on forestalling the inevitable for as long as possible. For many of these, happiness is just not suffering. Happiness is having meat on the table, light to see with at night, and having the whole family alive all at once.
R: Am I to believe that the majority of human beings live in third-world conditions?
V: Spoken like a true American.
R: Fair enough. But you said “no” to my question earlier about whether people are generally happy—so you must have some opinion on the issue.
V: I think people, like the ones you describe, are unhappy because they have come to mistakenly believe that happiness is an end in itself.
R: And why shouldn’t it be?
V: Because no matter how you define it, happiness is just a sensation. It is a feeling, whether deep or shallow, that comes and goes. Pursuing it as if it was something concrete turns people into seekers, like you say, as opposed to doers. They seek happiness first, and by it they decide what they will do. When what they’re doing no longer makes them happy, they do something else. Like locusts devouring crops, happiness seekers move from one field to the next. But the fact that something makes you happy is no criteria for judging the value of any action. It is possible that eating bacon every morning makes me happy, but what value is it to my health? Perhaps stealing makes me happy. Or beating my spouse. Or taking another’s life. Perhaps these actions bring me a deep sense of lasting satisfaction. Am I to believe that the only important factor then is that I am happy? Of course this is absurd. I believe that happiness is secondary to duty: for by duty we should decide what is right, what we ought to be doing, and let happiness follow if it may. The supreme state of being, in my opinion, is to be happy because you are doing what you believe to be right, to be your moral duty as a human being. For me, our moral duty comes before our happiness, principally and practically. I think you will find that the most satisfied people in life are often those who feel that they are living by the dictates of their conscience, and not simply by the whim of their desires. Such people do not live in a state of disarray, but in a state of order. They believe in a reason for their actions that lies beyond their own concerns, and thus they do not constantly evaluate their activities from the standpoint of their own happiness. They do things not because they feel like it, but because they believe they should. This bestows on them a sense of purpose, and purpose drives a person much harder than pleasure.
R: I’m not sure that’s all that different from my position.
V: Your position is that we should live differently because we will be more content. My position is that we should live differently because it is our duty, and to be true to our sense of moral obligation will bring contentedness after all.
R: Well, what then is our duty?
V: Your first duty is to answer that question for yourself. You can never live by the dictates of your own principles if you haven’t any.
R: And how do you think I might do that?
V: Finish your books, and follow the advice of old men you find at coffee shops.
R: Perhaps I will.
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